Borrowed Dreams
by Grasspaw
Summary: Season 4 AU: Dean doesn't remember Hell. But that's okay, because Sam is remembering for him.


**Has anyone else noticed how everyone seems to show their love for their favorite characters by hurting them? It's like, "Aww, look at little Sammy being adorable here. Let's torture him for a bit. Yes, yes, that sounds good. How much pain can I cause this character in under a thousand words? Ha ha..." I own nothing.**

It's dark and cold in the motel room, the heater having shut off some time during the night, and it's quiet save for soft, pained breathing and the rustling of covers.

Neither of which are coming from Sam, who's holding his breath and lying perfectly still as he listens to Dean dream. The older man's breath catches, and Sam screws his eyes shut, trembling and sending up a desperate prayer to anyone who might hear him.

_Please, oh God, please, don't let me see it, I don't want to, I can't take it anymore, oh please God no..._

It changes nothing. Less than a minute later, Dean jerks awake, and Sam wants to scream because he knows what comes next. As his brother's nightmare fades back into the recesses of his mind, it fades right into Sam's.

He's come to think of the memories as living, tangible things that require a working mind without a mental wall up in order to exist. After all, if a memory is forgotten, who's to say it ever even happened? Dean is blocking out his time in Hell, and the memories are having a hard time surviving without him there to dwell on them.

So instead, they take a jaunt over to his psychic little brother's brain, which is more receptive than it once was, what with the practice and the demon's blood opening it up. And those memories that Dean can't face settle quite happily into Sam's head until he can't remember which one of them actually went to Hell. Did he stay up top and learn how to survive with Ruby and without Dean? Or did he spend the time stretched out on a rack as Alistair's personal favorite? Was he exorcizing demons or torturing human souls, drinking blood or shedding it? Was it four months or forty years?

He hides it from Dean, of course. He doesn't want Dean to remember, and Dean doesn't need to do so. Besides, Sam's barely keeping it together as it is; he thinks that actually speaking the memories out loud might kill him. He made his brother go through all that? How could he? He's a monster, and he knows it.  
Tonight's dream is a particularly brutal one. He tries not to dwell on it, but how can he not? There was blood and pain and fire and-

He barely makes it to the bathroom before he retches, violently enough that he's halfway convinced his stomach itself is trying to exit through his mouth. Tears stream helplessly down his cheeks as he groans, barely holding himself up, and memories from his - no, Dean's - time in Hell are on a loop in his mind. It never stops, not once, not ever.

A hand cradles his forehead, another soothingly rubbing his back. "There you go, Sammy," Dean whispers. "You're okay. Almost done."

That's true, at least; in the two months since Dean has been back, Sam has seen almost all of the forty years worth of Hell that he made his brother go through. There are a few missing patches, but he's sure that pretty soon those will be filled in. And since the nightmares are never repeats (he would have thought that after forty years the demons would have run out of ideas, but no), he thinks that once Dean has dreamed it all - and Sam has taken it from him - then maybe they'll stop entirely. _He'll_ still have the nightmares, of course, because nothing could ever make him forget what he sees in his brother's mind, but at least there won't be anything new.

The thought is almost relieving.

And it's worth it, he tells himself fiercely, because no matter how much he desperately wishes that he didn't feel like this, didn't have to deal with these nightmares, at least it means that Dean isn't.

"Sam? You okay?"

"Yeah," he whispers, voice wrecked, and he brushes away his own tears self-consciously. "I'm fine."

It was just a dream, after all.


End file.
